Select a Zoo

Reviews — Zoos out­side Europe

Welling­ton Zoo

His­tory

New Zealand’s old­est sur­viv­ing zoo was estab­lished in 1906 after a group of res­i­dents peti­tioned the Welling­ton City Coun­cil to estab­lish a Zoo for the peo­ple of Welling­ton. This peti­tion coin­cided with the offer to the city of a young lion by the name of “King Dick” (named after Prime Min­is­ter Richard Sed­don) by the Bostock and Womb­well Cir­cus. King Dick was offi­cially the Zoo’s first ani­mal. King Dick was soon joined by llama, emus and kan­ga­roos to form the foun­da­tion of the Zoo, ini­tially housed in the Welling­ton Botan­i­cal Gar­dens. The col­lec­tion was moved to New­town Park, the Zoo’s present loca­tion, in 1907. The col­lec­tion of ani­mals grew con­tin­u­ously, with for instance two axis deer and six Himalayan thar donated by the duke of Bed­ford, pres­i­dent of the Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don, in 1908. Other dona­tions, from other zoos and pri­vate col­lec­tions, fol­lowed and by 1912, Welling­ton Zoo housed over 500 ani­mals. King Dick was pre­sented with a female com­pan­ion, which led to lion cubs born in 2013. Other species on dis­play in that year included camel (which vis­i­tors could ride), sea lion, capuchin mon­key and dingo. Over the next 30 years, with sup­port of the Welling­ton Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety the Zoo new ani­mals were acquired and new enclo­sures built or improved. The first tigers arrived in 1923 and the first ele­phants in 1927, while two moated bear enclo­sures with con­crete walls were con­structed in 1929 and 1931. The Zoo records show that in the 1920s, besides the Tas­man­ian devil, the now extinct Tas­man­ian tiger or Thy­lacine was part of the ani­mal col­lec­tion as well.

Dur­ing WWII zoo devel­op­ment stopped tem­porar­ily, because sev­eral zookeep­ers joined the armed forces. Nev­er­the­less things were picked up after the war where they were left ear­lier. The pri­mate sec­tion grew with the arrival of a young Muller’s grey gib­bon (Hylo­bates muel­leri) in Decem­ber 1949, who became the first zoo’s longest serv­ing res­i­dent – to be trumped by a tuatara at a cer­tain point in the future of course – as well as the world’s old­est gib­bon when he died in 2008. In 1956, as a part of the Zoo’s 50th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, three female chim­panzees arrived from Lon­don Zoo. This must have been the rea­son that they intro­duced tea par­ties with the chimps after­wards. Like in Lon­don zoo the tea par­ties were very pop­u­lar with the public.

The last tea party was in Feb­ru­ary 1970, four years after Koen­raad Kuiper became Zoo direc­tor. After World War II Kuiper emi­grated to New Zealand because he couldn’t find a suit­able job in the Nether­lands. More remark­ably, his father had been direc­tor of Rot­ter­dam Zoo (Dier­gaarde Bli­j­dorp) before and dur­ing the war. Kuiper senior had been a strong oppo­nent of using zoo ani­mals for enter­tain­ment of the pub­lic. This might have influ­enced the ideas of the son, and together with the new era of zoo devel­op­ment and hus­bandry this led to an end of the chimp tea par­ties. Today, Welling­ton Zoo’s chim­panzees live in a large out­door park and new indoor home, which was com­pleted in 2007.

In the 1970s a revival of inter­est in New Zealand’s indige­nous species, such as the kiwi and tuatara led to the open­ing of the Zoo’s first noc­tur­nal house in 1975.

The four ele­phants the zoo housed dur­ing its exis­tence, pro­vided enter­tain­ment to the pub­lic by offer­ing rides on their back. New insights in ani­mal behav­iour, ele­phants should be ide­ally kept in herds of 4 – 5 as they are very social ani­mals, and zoo objec­tives led to the deci­sion in 1983 to that the zoo had nei­ther the space nor the resources to keep elephants.

In the 1980s many old-​fashioned con­crete and barred cages were demol­ished and replaced by enclo­sures of mod­ern design, while for the ani­mal col­lec­tion more atten­tion was paid to endan­gered species instead of the many com­mon species they had on dis­play. Hence, species such as snow leop­ard, giraffe, sun bear, lemur, white-​cheeked gib­bon and Suma­tran tigers joined the col­lec­tion. In addi­tion, breed­ing pro­grammes were ini­ti­ated for kiwi and tuatara. The next decade saw the launch of a total over­haul of the Zoo, but due to an eco­nomic reces­sion this couldn’t be pur­sued and finalised. Nev­er­the­less, it did deliver a brand new entrance build­ing, which also housed a new zoo school, a gift shop and admin­is­tra­tive quar­ters. Decem­ber 1998 the exhibit called Trop­i­cal River Trail was opened which fol­lowed the newest design stan­dards for enclo­sures to pro­vide vis­i­tors a spe­cial expe­ri­ence by habi­tat immer­sion. This part start­ing directly after the entrance, includ­ing the pri­mate islands, still exists, but lost the name Trop­i­cal River Trail.

A new major rede­vel­op­ment started in 2002 fol­lowed by a grand open­ing of the new Asia sec­tion, a spon­sored project, in Sep­tem­ber 2012. The Asia sec­tion includes the new Malayan Sun Bear exhibit, as well as the rede­vel­oped Suma­tran Tiger exhibit. On 22 Octo­ber 2015 the final project of that rede­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, Meet the Locals – cel­e­brat­ing New Zealand’s native species, was opened to the pub­lic. The brand new kea aviary walk-​through expe­ri­ence, how­ever, was com­pleted and pop­u­lated in 2017.

The Zoo is a not for profit char­i­ta­ble trust, and has been that way since 2003. The Trust runs the Zoo on behalf of Welling­ton City Coun­cil – the Zoo’s prin­ci­pal funder.

Visit(s)

06.03.2016

After a short bus ride from down­town Welling­ton I arrive at the Zoo in New­town, the sub­urb that is located in the hills Welling­ton is built on. Together with neigh­bour­ing New­town Park the Zoo is part of a green belt that runs over these hills at this side of town. It has been six­teen years since my pre­vi­ous visit to Welling­ton Zoo and I expect to see a lot of changes, although I doubt if my rec­ol­lec­tion of that visit is spot on.

Any­way, the Asian small-​clawed otter enclo­sure and the gib­bon island directly after the entrance are exactly how I remem­ber it. Espe­cially the island for the white-​cheeked gib­bons and the island for the brown capuchins and spi­der mon­keys (black-​handed as well as white-​fronted) pro­vide a nat­u­ral­is­tic habi­tat with plenty of veg­e­ta­tion, although a few really large trees would make at least the two gib­bons (male and female) happy I think, for allow­ing them to brachi­ate through the tree­tops. Now they have to include the ropes and wooden poles in their rush through the exhibit. The water-​filled moat around both the islands is being super­vised by Aus­tralian pel­i­can, as police offi­cers in their black-​and-​white plumage.

Oppo­site the gib­bon island the noc­tur­nal house, called The Twi­light, houses kiwi and tuatara. It is basi­cally a walk-​through exhibit where you can see, if your eyes are up to it, the Zoo’s three male North Island brown kiwi and two of their tuatara. The lat­ter are some­times called ‘liv­ing fos­sils’, as they are the only liv­ing mem­bers of an ancient order of rep­tile that evolved mil­lions of years ago. Tuatara live their lives in the ‘slow lane’ and can grow very old. Peo­ple think they can become 100 and more. The old­est Tuatara at the Zoo is over 50 years old. Two of the tuatara are trained as con­tact ani­mals, which means that there’s a chance you can meet them around the Zoo some­where while han­dled by a Vis­i­tor Ranger.

Another mixed-​species exhibit is sit­u­ated on the same side of the foot­path as The Twi­light, oppo­site the other pri­mate island. Boli­vian squir­rel mon­key together with agouti are kept in what I would call a semi-​closed exhibit, mean­ing that the ani­mals are sep­a­rated from the vis­i­tors on the lower part by glass, while the upper part con­sists of wire mesh. Sep­a­rated from the squir­rel mon­key the build­ing also has cotton-​top tamarin on display.

Next I pass the Green Zoo – an inter­ac­tive exhibit that explains about being respon­si­ble and sus­tain­able con­sid­er­ing your impact on the envi­ron­ment – and have a look at the area ded­i­cated to New Zealand’s native species, Meet the Locals it is called or He Tuku Aroha in Maori lan­guage. This sec­tion was opened on 22 Octo­ber 2015 and is designed for vis­i­tors to expe­ri­ence what New Zealand is like. The small foot­path winds uphill along wild and domes­tic indige­nous species such as lit­tle blue pen­guin (Eudyp­tula minor), Finnish Lan­drace sheep, kunekune pig, weta and ends at the kea walk-​through aviary that is still under con­struc­tion and due for open­ing in 2017.

The Zoo acts as a res­cue cen­tre for the world’s small­est pen­guin they keep at Pen­guin Point near the entrance of this NZ area. None of them have been born in cap­tiv­ity, but each was res­cued from a life-​threatening sit­u­a­tion in the wild, either eye-​related issues or flip­per trauma due to being tan­gled badly in fish­ing gear. This impaired their hunt­ing abil­i­ties and thus sur­vival in the wild. They are well taken care of as they have access to a nice pool with veg­e­ta­tion on the banks that resem­bles the veg­e­ta­tion along New Zealand’s coast­line. The boat that ser­vices as shel­ter is per­haps a bit over­done, although in the wild the birds may seek shel­ter at night under boats that lie on the shore.

The Farm with the sheep and kunekune pigs, but also with bees, rab­bits, and chick­ens, has a barn area where vis­i­tors can learn more about how we rely on ani­mals for prod­ucts like wool, honey, meat and milk. There’s also a regen­er­at­ing bush in which 4,000 native plants were planted to attract and sup­port the native wildlife which live in the Zoo’s sur­round­ings. It could be that my expec­ta­tions of the mes­sage to be pro­vided by a zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity are mis­guided, but at the Farm I miss the story about the con­se­quences of the mas­sive amounts of ani­mal prod­ucts we pro­duce and con­sume world­wide – the impact on bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tems. Unless I over­looked such vital infor­ma­tion which is rel­e­vant for the mes­sage a zoo should get across, this part fails to impress me. This is not the case at the final stage of the Meet the Locals sec­tion where some lesser known locals are intro­duced includ­ing grand skinks, Otago skinks and Maud Island frogs. There it is explained how the Zoo is a con­ser­va­tion hub within New Zealand. Unfor­tu­nately, the kea aviary is still under con­struc­tion, but the size is very promis­ing. It will allow these smart moun­tain par­rots, that use tools to get food and are capa­ble of solv­ing com­plex puz­zles, to show nor­mal behav­iour – fly­ing around. As this will be a walk-​through aviary there will be an access point on the other side as well, that is near the Suma­tran tiger enclosure.

At the moment the path ends here, so I return to the Meet the Locals entrance and turn towards the black-​and-​white ruffed lemurs oppo­site the cur­rent kea exhibit. They keep only two spec­i­mens of this Crit­i­cally Endan­gered pri­mate species. The social struc­ture of the species varies from large groups to pairs in the wild, so keep­ing just two of them is not unnat­ural. The enclo­sure type is a bit old-​school I would say, with wire mesh fences at the front except for the lower part where there are view­ing win­dows. Nowa­days, lemur enclo­sures are mostly pre­sented as walk-​through exhibits, but as I am not in favour of close encoun­ters and touch­ing I pre­fer the old-​school type with much enrich­ment and veg­e­ta­tion like the one Welling­ton Zoo has built.

Mean­while the foot­path has reached a rather steep slope here. Most of the paths are gen­tly slop­ing, but some are steep enough to make even a healthy adult walk slowly 😉. As said, the Zoo is sit­u­ated on one of the hills in the Welling­ton area, so a lit­tle effort was to be expected while explor­ing the grounds.

Before I go fur­ther uphill to the sun bear and Suma­tran tiger ter­ri­tory I have a brief look at the golden lion tamarin exhibit. The tamarin are tem­porar­ily not on dis­play, because just recently a new male has arrived from Bronx Zoo, USA, and was intro­duced to the Zoo’s female. The Zoo hopes they will con­tribute to the inter­na­tional con­ser­va­tion breed­ing pro­gramme, but to achieve this they first have to get used to each other back­stage. The Mini Mon­key house, where sep­a­rate from the golden lion tamarin also pygmy mar­mosets are housed, com­prises lots of veg­e­ta­tion in a nat­u­ral­is­tic habi­tat. The pygmy mar­mosets share their habi­tats with Green Iguanas.

The two sun bears are cur­rently the only bears held in a zoo­log­i­cal facil­ity in New Zealand. They have access to a large uphill sit­u­ated enclo­sure with many boul­ders and a water­fall. To com­pen­sate for the lack of veg­e­ta­tion addi­tional enrich­ment fea­tures are pro­vided, such as tree trunks and wooden plat­forms, to mimic their orig­i­nal habi­tat in the trop­i­cal forests of South­east Asia. One of the bears, born in the wild, was res­cued from out­side a store in Cam­bo­dia in 1996. He came to Welling­ton Zoo in 2004 as part of the regional Malayan Sun Bear breed­ing programme.

Next to the bear exhibit there are two tiger enclo­sures for the Suma­tran tiger cou­ple. These young tigers are poten­tial part­ners within the breed­ing pro­gramme, but are kept sep­a­rate and intro­duced slowly. The main and largest enclo­sure, although still much too small for an ani­mal with such a large hunt­ing ter­ri­tory as the tiger, is equipped with all fea­tures a big cat could wish for – a vari­ety of veg­e­ta­tion that pro­vide shade when needed, trees to sat­isfy its scratch­ing behav­iour, a pond for a cool dip, high level obser­va­tion posts and sev­eral shel­ters. The other enclo­sure is smaller and hardly vis­i­ble from any view­ing position.

The high­est point of the grounds has two ded­i­cated areas, one for African species and one for Aus­tralian ani­mals. Com­ing from the sun bears I start my tour around this part of the Zoo at the the mixed-​species exhibit with giraffe, ostrich, hel­meted guinea fowl and a large herd of nyala. It’s a large dry savan­nah type enclo­sure with an obser­va­tion hut with a thatched roof and in one cor­ner a fake African vil­lage to con­tribute to the make-​believe Africa expe­ri­ence. In con­trast to many of the bar-​less enclo­sures I have seen so far, and much to my sur­prise, the ser­val and cara­cal that are kept across from the savan­nah area have not only wire mesh fences all around but a wire mesh net­ting as a roof as well. This is not per se a neg­a­tive fea­ture, as long as the needs of the species are met. But for species that like to climb trees and pre­fer high level obser­va­tion or rest­ing posts, or like to swing around in tree­tops, a wire mesh roof could impair their nat­ural behav­iour. Cre­at­ing a roof in an exhibit nor­mally means less height and no large trees available.

A lit­tle fur­ther along the path and neigh­bour­ing the cara­cal, another feline species that has the savan­nah as its native habi­tat can be found, the chee­tah. This fastest land mam­mal has an open top enclo­sure at its dis­posal, that mim­ics a dry savan­nah. Partly due to the size of the enclo­sure, and partly because of the slop­ing grounds, a chee­tah that will retire uphill will be invis­i­ble for visitors.

The enor­mous enclo­sure for the small troop of hamadryas baboons, seven to be exact, that fol­lows on the left when I con­tinue my tour, is most impres­sive. Too large to even con­sider cre­at­ing a roof, the fences have a spe­cial rim that should keep the baboons from break­ing out. It’s unlike the crowded baboon rock you’ll see in many Euro­pean zoos. This enclo­sure with its slop­ing grounds is rather bare with some large boul­ders and the odd shrub, and it takes a few moments before I spot my first baboon.

I’m in for a sur­prise when I fol­low the path into the Aus­tralian out­back sec­tion, called Neigh­bours. There’s a free roam­ing emu replac­ing the omnipresent pea­cocks in Euro­pean zoos. I’m on my guard while pro­ceed­ing. Not only because this is for the first time I expe­ri­ence a close encounter pos­si­bil­ity with an emu, but also because I’ve heard about the dam­age an ostrich can cause when attack­ing a per­son. Com­mon ostriches deliver slash­ing kicks with their pow­er­ful feet, armed with long claws, with which they can dis­em­bowel or kill a per­son with a sin­gle blow. And an emu is just a small ostrich or not. See for yourself:

Other species in the Aus­tralia sec­tion are the dingo, the inevitable East­ern grey kan­ga­roo and the wal­laby, as well as four Tas­man­ian dev­ils that came to the Zoo in 2013, for the first time since the 1920s. Welling­ton Zoo sup­ports the Save the Tas­man­ian Devil Pro­gram as of Decem­ber 2013 to save the species from extinc­tion due to the Devil Facial Tumour Dis­ease – a rare con­ta­gious viral can­cer that reduced wild Tas­man­ian Devil pop­u­la­tions by about 80%. Within the pro­gramme the con­tribut­ing zoos work together to cre­ate a healthy insur­ance pop­u­la­tion, that is cru­cial for repop­u­lat­ing Tas­ma­nia once the dis­ease has been elim­i­nated in the wild.

When leav­ing the Neigh­bours sev­eral African species are wait­ing ahead, of which the por­cu­pine and meerkat are the least inter­est­ing. The chim­panzee troop of 10, how­ever, is one of the largest in Aus­trala­sia. They have a walled out­door enclo­sure with lots of arti­fi­cial enrich­ment, such as ropes, wooden poles and plat­forms, and a water-​filled moat on the visitor’s side (see also video). And if it wasn’t for the wall the chimps would have a mag­nif­i­cent view on the city, but for­tu­nately they can climb upon a plat­form to enjoy the views. It’s clear that the exhibit can do with some addi­tional veg­e­ta­tion – a few trees and shrubs will take away the dull­ness of the grassy pad­dock. Per­haps the enclo­sure update that is expected to be com­pleted mid to late 2018 will make the chimp habi­tat more naturalistic.

The last African species on my tour is the one with which it all began in 1906 when ‘King Dick’, a young African lion, was donated to the city by the Bostock and Womb­well Cir­cus (see His­tory). Nowa­days the Zoo hosts five lions, but it is not actu­ally a pride of five. The three females are kept sep­a­rate from the two males to avoid any aggres­sion, because the gen­der groups do not like each other that much. The some­what cir­cu­lar out­door enclo­sure has got a large rock for­ma­tion in the mid­dle that pro­vides shadow, shel­ter and a high level obser­va­tion plat­form. But fur­ther to this it is not very spectacular.

Welling­ton Zoo is not much dif­fer­ent from other zoos world­wide regard­ing their ani­mal col­lec­tion. They made a brave deci­sion in the 1980s to reduce the num­ber of species and focus on endan­gered species instead of the com­mon ones. But the choices of the species they keep are very sim­i­lar to choices made at other zoos. Espe­cially species that are attrac­tive for the poten­tial vis­i­tor, for instance renowned and dan­ger­ous such as tigers or lions, or with an extra­or­di­nar­ily anatomy like a giraffe, or sup­pos­edly cud­dly like lemurs, and of course apes always increase vis­i­tor num­bers. Thus, when I make my way to the exit it’s not a sur­prise to find a red panda exhibit on my right hand side. It’s a nice exhibit with a lot of veg­e­ta­tion includ­ing a few large trees that offer great sleep­ing places for the small car­ni­vore with the thick red hairy coat from Asia whose diet con­sists mainly (98%) of bamboo.

Like many zoos with a long his­tory and there­fore many changes in the col­lec­tion as well as in lay­out and build­ings, they arrived at a in-​between-​solution of how to present the ani­mal col­lec­tion. Here at Welling­ton Zoo I saw three clearly defined areas with ani­mals from a cer­tain geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin, New Zealand, Africa and Aus­tralia. In addi­tion they have grouped their pri­mate species from three con­ti­nents with noc­tur­nal species as neigh­bours. The four non-​primate species from Asian ori­gin, Suma­tran tiger, sun bear, red panda and small-​clawed otter, are not really grouped I would say, they are more or less fill­ing the gaps. All in all I think it is not too con­fus­ing for the igno­rant vis­i­tor, also because the geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin is men­tioned on the infor­ma­tion pan­els. The species con­ser­va­tion sta­tus is pro­vided accord­ing the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, next to a brief descrip­tion of other species specifics. What is really dis­ap­point­ing is the lack of the sci­en­tific names of the species, on the infor­ma­tion pan­els as well as on the web­site. Apart from this obvi­ous flaw from edu­ca­tional point of view, the web­site is a good source of infor­ma­tion on the Zoo’s species, includ­ing the con­ser­va­tion needs and the efforts the Zoo make to ful­fil those needs.

17.09.2000

Gib­bon Island and Mon­key Island are the most impres­sive exhibits in the zoo. Not spec­tac­u­lar as enclo­sures, but very quiet with pri­mates well adapted to their envi­ron­ment. The otter enclo­sure allows you to have a close encounter with the very active lit­tle bug­ger. He’s fun, but take care. Unfor­tu­nately I was not able to spot the ever so impor­tant kiwi in the night-​enclosure.

A small and quiet zoo, sit­u­ated on one of the hills south­west of town.

Video

06.03.2016

Well-​mannered chimpanzee

Chimps are well-​known for their abil­ity to use tools for col­lect­ing food, for instance by pok­ing a branch in a ter­mite hill and col­lect those juicy deli­cious ter­mites. This chimp at Welling­ton Zoo takes this to another level and shows how it can drink more dig­ni­fied by using a tool.

Small-​clawed otters

These two Asian small-​clawed otters have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion about the sun, obvi­ously. While one of them is hid­ing in the shadow, the other is wal­low­ing in the warmth of the sun – or he could just be itchy.

More info

Some addi­tional infor­ma­tion, such as con­tact details and involve­ment in breed­ing programmes.

pub­lic transport

by bicy­cle

As Welling­ton is built in a hilly land­scape and New­town, where you will find the Zoo, is sit­u­ated against one of the hills, you’re look­ing at a cou­ple of hun­dred metres of stren­u­ous ped­alling when you come from down­town Welling­ton. But hey, this is New Zealand. Let us keep this city clean and use an envi­ron­men­tal friendly mode of trans­porta­tion. There are sev­eral bicy­cle shops that have rentals, as well as Base Back­pack­ers on Kent Terrace.

by car

From the city in less than 10 min­utes – fol­low the brown ‘zoo’ signs. Lim­ited free park­ing. There­fore it can be dif­fi­cult to find a car park on busy days, and you are encour­aged to park a lit­tle fur­ther away and walk up to the Zoo. Or catch the bus!